Tag Archives: branch

Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Autumn Foliage and Sandstone

November 11, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A bush with a few remaining autumn leaves in front of an s-shaped crack in a sandstone wall

At the suggestion of another photographer, near the end of our trip we decided to investigate the canyon in which I photographed this tree. The canyon begins in an inauspicious manner, in a shallow wash at the bottom of a slight canyon – the sort of place you could easily drive through and not particularly notice it. There is no sign to mark the route. Following the wash downstream across the flats, another wash joins from the right and soon the sandy bottom becomes rocky as the route meets the top of a sandstone layer. This layer gradually tilts higher and begins to form low walls, and almost before you know it you are inside the beginning of the canyon. A very narrow slot with a large drop-off interrupts the passage and the route detours around it before dropping back into the bottom of the canyon.

Before long, and almost before you know it, the sandstone walls of the canyon become hundreds of feet tall and even begin to overhang the canyon in places, and it is now clear that you have entered the alternate and isolated universe of a deep canyon. At first the canyon is rather barren, but after some distance there are more trees as the route turns and twists downward. As always, surprises appear continually. In this case of this photograph, a simple little bush happened to appear in front of an s-curve marking the edge of a joint in the sandstone where rock had fallen away, and the light reflected among the canyon walls colored the sandstone red.

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Aspen Tree, Morning Light

October 7, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

An aspen tree with morning backlight, photographed high above Bishop Creek Canyon

I’m continuing to indulge in my fascination with back-lit subjects today. This solitary aspen tree was located in an odd, out-of-the-way spot in the North Lake area, high in the Bishop Creek drainage. I had finished shooting at the lake and in the nearby aspen groves when I got the idea of walking the approach road a bit and finding a spot with a view to the canyon far below and to its shadowed walls on the far side of the canyon. For the sort of shot I had in mind, almost any small aspen tree would do as long as it was in the right place with the right background, and you would not think of this one as being anything special if you saw it – it is small, located on a dry and rocky section of hillside, and among a few other scattered small trees. However, it turned out to have what I wanted – a clear shot of the shadowed far hillside for background, separation from other trees, a few remaining leaves, and that backlight.

Photographing a location like North Lake can be an interesting experience. It holds at least a couple of the iconic Sierra autumn scenes with which many are familiar. (You can often find workshop participants lined up along a particular beautiful spot along the shoreline.) As with so many such subjects, most start with those impressive and familiar views – and they are worthy of photographs. But it is equally true that return visits to such a place, especially when they lead to more thorough observation, turn up a lot of interesting subjects that are not those familiar ones that first attracted our attention and lead to a much more complete knowledge of the place.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Trees and Cliff, Morning

September 27, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Morning light spills over a high ridge to back light trees near Steelhead Lake.

This photograph was made from a point perhaps ten feet (or less!) from my bivy sack. We were camped at out-of-the-way Steelhead Lake, up above McGee Canyon and off the main trail to McGee Lakes and McGee Pass. While I had looked up McGee Canyon from the trailhead before – almost every year while photographing aspens, in fact – this was the first time that I had backpacked up this route and had a chance to actually explore the area. We ended up staying at this lake for two nights, providing time to do a bit of exploration and to see certain subjects that I might have missed with a shorter visit.

I had seen and photographed (though in a different way) this little clump of lakeside trees the morning before, but after thinking about them a bit more I felt that I’d like to shoot them again the next morning. The light at this lake is a bit tricky in that there is a very high ridge to the south and east that blocks the light until quite late in the morning. No morning golden hour shots at this lake! The ridge holds two of the four “railroad baron” peaks that surround Pioneer Basin – Crocker and Stanford. (The other two are Hopkins and Huntington.) A few years ago I had investigated Pioneer Basin on a separate trip and had stood on top of this very ridge and looked down towards this year’s camp. In any case, I had an idea to shoot the trees against backlight, and almost as soon as the sun appeared above this ridge I went to work. I had to shoot essentially straight into the sun in order to get the glowing atmosphere in the canyon beyond the first ridge, and even with a long focal length I was barely able to keep my hand out of the frame as I shaded to front of the lens.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Pacific Northwest

Daylily Blossoms

August 6, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Daylily blossoms in the Commemorative Garden at the Gene and Irene Wockner Hospice Center.

This is another photograph of the bed of daylily blooms in the Commemorative Garden at the Wockner Hospice in Kirkland, Washington. I was thinking this morning about why it is that these particular flowers ended up being my main subject during the brief “photo walk” I took through the garden, and I realized that one main reason was that they were in the shade! When I photographed in the late afternoon, much of the garden was in full or partial sun – not great conditions for photographing the forms of flowers. But this area of the garden was shaded behind tall trees, leaving me with much softer light to work with. In addition, both the colors and shapes of these flowers are fascinating, especially here where a group of them ended up all slanting across the frame in much the same way. The flowers are also quite varied. As I understand it, the name “daylily” refers to the short life of the flowers in their prime, as in “they only last a day.” Consequently, while there are many flowers they are at various different stages of development: the small and tightly formed buds, the longer shapes just before they open, the fully opened and most colorful forms, and then various stages of “decay” as they turn beautiful, darker colors and shrivel up.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: branch

Autumn Foliage and Sandstone

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Aspen Tree, Morning Light

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Trees and Cliff, Morning

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Daylily Blossoms

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Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.

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Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.